Posts Tagged ‘recovery’

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

+ Exodus 20:2-3

One of the ideas we have been examining in our Purity Platoon is intimacy with God. True intimacy with God leads to serenity, joy, and purity. False intimacy leads to acting out, sexual sin, and addiction.

My life has been filled with false intimacy. Rather than turning to God for my deepest needs, I turn to and rely on myself. I don’t trust God, I trust me.

Because of this reliance on self, I use behaviors and substances to meet my needs – needs that can only truly be met by God. I don’t have a true sense of self worth, so I continually try to prove to myself and others how valuable and/or significant I am. And to find acceptance, I will do what others want me to do.

That is false intimacy.

True intimacy begins with the understanding that God is God – He is the only source for meeting all of my needs and He has commanded me to have no other gods besides Him.

True intimacy with God means that I trust God alone to meet my deepest needs for the following:

Identity

Security & Protection

Significance & Value

Intimacy & Love

Provision

Direction

Acceptance

As I have noted before, there is a god-shaped hole in my heart and there is only one source for filling that hole – God Himself. True intimacy with God is the way to fill the hole.

After nine years of working with a great company, I have moved on to a new opportunity. Life is different here. I am more engaged in my new work and I no longer have an office. This is a good change for an addict … no place to hide.

New work, new friends, new opportunities. And it looks like it will be easier for me to blog here (no security filters stopping me from blogging suring the day).

So how has the Turtle been?

That’s always a complicated question for an addict. I haven’t acted out for a long time. But I also have not been connecting with my accountability partners. This puts me in a dangerous place … I seem to be back to doing it on my own. That’s no place for an addict.

But I feel so busy. And I feel so exposed. So many people sit so close to me, how can I make a call to check-in? Won’t people hear what I am checking in about? Won’t they all figure out I am a sex addict? Won’t that end any chance I have of making friends and fitting in?

Those are my excuses for not reaching out. They are weak … and so am I.

The yo-yo can also be a symbol for the addict’s tools for coping: addiction and isolation.

Y.O.Y.O.

Your On Your Own.

That’s the addict. He’s on his own. Why? Because his core beliefs tell him that this must be so.

The addict struggles with the following core beliefs about himself:

1. The addict is a bad and worthless person.
2. Anyone who learns the truth about the addict will reject and abandon the addict.
3. No one else will take care of the addict’s needs.

YOYO.

Is it any wonder the addict feels alone most of the time. The addict cannot believe that any other option exists. He is worthless, all others will abandon him, and only he can care for himself.

YOYO.

If there is to be any hope for the addict, he must toss away his yo-yo. He must adopt new beliefs about himself and about the people around him. He must be willing to accept help from others and he must be willing to take the risk to open himself up to others. Yes … healing for the addict must come from facing his deepest fear: he must reveal the truth about himself even though he believes that anyone who knows the truth about him will reject him.

I spent much of last year looking into the jaws of the Lion, but still avoiding them. Surrendered to his teeth? But that meant … death. Not just a wound. Not even just a deep cut. Giving myself to the teeth of the Lion would mean the end of me.

The. End. Of. Me.

And that is when I began to see that that was precisely what he wanted. The end of me. The end of my goodness. The end of my righteousness. He wanted me dead. Not dying. Dead.